


It's not you... it's m(y dad)

by paranoids



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fate, Fate & Destiny, ted wheeler is a jackass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 09:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paranoids/pseuds/paranoids
Summary: Ted Wheeler is great at one thing: exploiting his son’s insecurities.Prompt: Mileven Week 2018, Day 2: "Fate."





	It's not you... it's m(y dad)

Ted Wheeler didn’t dislike the Chief’s daughter. In fact, he felt much the same way about her as he did his son: he rarely thought much about her at all. Usually, this kept him from interfering in Mike’s love life, but it didn’t keep him from noticing. He watched his son fall head over heels in love with that girl from the moment she first stepped foot into the Wheeler house and all the way through high school. When they didn’t break up after a year, as he had expected, he had always just thought, well they’ll part ways before college. But that spring Mike informed both his parents that he and “El,” as they called her, would be moving to Bloomington in the fall. Mike and Dustin would be attending Indiana University together, while El attended a community college nearby.

It was strange. He’d never seen two people so close to one another in his life. Not between any of the other kids Mike was always spending time with, and certainly not between Ted and his own wife.

All throughout that spring Ted began to pay closer and closer attention. His eyes fixated on Mike and Jane’s interlocking fingers at the dinner table, he noticed the little exchanged smiles and heartfelt glances shared when they thought no one was looking. It didn’t warm his heart to see his son so happy. Instead, frankly, it made him a little angry.

Late one summer evening, after Mike had walked El home after dinner, Ted noticed Mike pull Nancy aside into her bedroom; she was back for a visit. Though age had made the siblings closer, it was still rare to see the two of them share a private moment. For the first time possibly ever, curiosity clutched at the father, and he strode over to listen in front of the door.

“You can’t tell mom or dad.” Mike’s voice was hushed.

“Jesus, what is it, Mike? You’re scaring me.”

“I’m… I’m going to ask El to marry me.”

A beat of silence.

Then, an excited giggle from Nancy.

“Mike!” she exclaimed. Ted couldn’t tell what happened next, but based on the silence he could only assume the two had embraced.

 A pause, and then Nancy’s voice bubbled up again. “I guess I’m going to have two sisters now.”

Mike said nothing.

“But…do me a favor. You’re so young… wait a while before you start a family, ok? You’re still kids yourselves.”

 “Ugh, Nancy, gross.”

“What?!”

“Don’t say ‘start a family’.”

“Mike, you’re going to ask a girl to marry you. That’s what you’re doing. Starting a new family; you and El.”

“El’s already my family.”

Another beat of silence.

“Mom is going to freak out.”

“That’s why you can’t tell her yet, OK? You can’t tell anyone.”

“I promise. My lips are sealed.”

 Ted Wheeler strolled away, bewildered. He thought about the moment he proposed to his own wife, the lackluster “yes” and the falseness of his own excitement. He was much older than Mike was now, and still he had made the wrong call. Of course, he loved his wife for the children they had together, and despite it all would not trade that for anything. But he couldn’t help thinking how different things would be now if he hadn’t proposed so soon. If he’d waited.

His mind lingered on Jane. Her dark, curly hair. Knobby knees. Big eyes. A quietness that lingered.

This was the only girl that Mike had ever loved. And he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

For once, Ted had to intervene. For his son’s sake.

Ted waited around until Mike came to wash the dishes. He joined him beside the sink, hands in his pockets.

“So, school starts in a couple weeks.”

Mike looked stunned that his father had spoken to him at all, let alone remembered when his move-in date was.

“Yeah,” was all he managed to say.

“You’ll be going with Dustin.”

 Mike’s brow furrowed.

“Right. And El,” he added.

“Right. And Jane.”

Mike’s feet shifted uncomfortably at the pointed correction of El’s name. It felt cold, unfamiliar. Mike felt protective of the name, as if he wanted to shelter it from the formation on his father’s own lips.

“How is she doing?”  

"Uh, good.” Mike was uneasy.

“And what about the two of you? Are you doing good?”

“Yeah,” Mike was confident in his response. Why did this feel like an argument? As though he had something to defend?

 “Son,” Ted said suddenly. Mike put down the plate and sponge in his hand and turned to look at his father, just an inch or so taller than him now, following Mike’s freshman year growth spurt.

“I overheard you and Nancy talking,” Ted continued.

Mike froze.

“I know what you’re planning.”

“I -- ”

"And I think it’s a mistake.”

Mike’s fist clenched.

"It’s not,” he said forcefully. “I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re 18, Michael.”

“Which makes me an adult, which makes me capable of making this decision on my own -- ”

He tried to keep his voice quiet, out of earshot of his mother in the living room, but his temper was heating up.

“She’s your first girlfriend, son,” Ted explained calmly. “You don’t know what else is out there.”

“I don’t need to know.”

And he was confident. Nothing, no one, else out there could ever possibly make him feel the way he did with El. No one could build upon the same foundation of shared history. No one could ever shine the way El did in his eyes.

“Well what about Jane? Does she feel this way?”

Mike stopped in his tracks.

_Of course she does_ , he thought initially.

Right?

“She’s so young. So inexperienced. She hasn’t known anything else.”

Mike swallowed. His hands were shaking.

“What if she walks into this always wondering if there was something else out there? A better… fit?”

The words were an anchor that pulled his heart down into his stomach. Every latent fear Mike had ever had, every minor insecurity, bubbled to the surface with a force far stronger than his self confidence.

He pictured a tall, handsome, man putting his arm around El. In response she smiles, cheeks deepening from a pale white to a soft pink.

“What if there’s someone out there meant to be with Jane but she’ll never know because she settled for the first boy she dated?”  

It was the most Mike had heard his dad speak – ever. And somehow, he had managed to vocalize Mike’s every fear.

Mike was the first boy El had ever met. Had ever become friends with. She was so pretty, and strong, and kind, and he knew people wondered why she was with  _him_. What if he was holding her back?

Mike left the rest of the dishes and locked himself in his room. Comforted by the darkness, he let himself cry. When the sun rose in the sky the next morning, he knew what he had to do.

\-----

Mike knocked reluctantly against the Hopper-Byers’ door. Joyce answered.

“Mike! You’re here early,” her eyes darted from him back inside their home.  “Did you want to join us for pancakes?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Byers. I’m just wondering…”

“If El’s around?”

Mike nodded.

Joyce turned to call out for her, but before she could open her mouth, he caught sight of a pair of legs in flannel pajama bottoms bouncing down the stairs. “Is that Mike?”

God, did she have to look so pretty  _all the time?_ El’s hair was frizzier than usual, a sign she’d just gotten out of bed, and her eyes were slightly puffy.

 If this was the worst she was going to look, he was in serious trouble.

“Yeah, sweetie. Mike’s here to see you.”

 “At 9 AM on a Sunday? Are you taking her to church, Wheeler?” Jonathan’s voice called good-naturedly from the kitchen.

El smiled. “Are we going somewhere? I have to get dressed…”

“No, no. What you’re wearing is fine. It’s perfect.” He smiled, sadly. El’s face flooded with concern.

“Well I’ll leave you to it,” Joyce said quietly.

Mike took El’s hand and the two walked a ways in silence, until the Hopper-Byers house was well behind them.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” El whispered. Mike sighed and sat down right where he was on the curb. El followed suit without question.

 “El… I think,”  _god was he going to throw up?_ , “I think we should see other people,” the words felt like acid on his lips.

Completely ignoring what he’d said, she asked concernedly, “Mike, are you OK?”

Mike glanced over and couldn’t help but catch her big, brilliant eyes. This was stupid. Yesterday, he had planned to ask this girl to marry him.

“I just think there are so many other people out there...”

El just stared silently, her expression a question mark.

“I’m… I’m saying we should break up.”

“Break up?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what it means … I just… you can’t mean what you mean?”

Mike didn’t dare look at her, staring at his shoelaces. “I…. do. I mean it.”

El’s face hardened. “Mike… Mike. Look at me. Mike.”

Reluctantly, he turned his head and his eyes, watery, found hers, eyeing him sternly.

“Why are you saying this? … Don’t lie.”

Mike hesitated. “You don’t know anything else, El. Anyone else. You can’t be with me if I’m all you’ve ever known.”

“Why not?”

 “Because there could be someone better!”

“Better than you?”

“Yeah. Better than me.”

El’s eyebrows furrowed. “There’s no one.”

“You don’t know that, though! You can’t know!”

“Yes, I can.”

“How?”

She straightened her shoulders and answered directly, “fate.”

Mike squinted his eyes. “Fate?”

“Yeah. It means something that was always meant to happen.”

Mike smiled. He couldn’t help the twinkle of pride he felt whenever he found El explaining something to him.

“I know,” he said softly.

"Good, then you should know that this is our fate."

“What is?”

“You and me,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “It’s fate.”

Mike said nothing, hoping she would continue without prompting.

She did.

“You found me – out of all the people in this world –  _you_  found me. Why?”

There wasn’t an answer. Not one that Mike could give, anyhow.

“We were looking for Will…”

“Because of me.”

He couldn’t argue.

“And a year apart… you could’ve given up on me… you could’ve moved on … but you didn’t. 353 days you called me.”

Again, Mike was speechless.

“And I can just… I can feel it. I don’t have to know anyone else. This was meant to be. My fate is you.” She squeezed his hand. “And your fate is me.”

She leaned in slowly, placing a soft kiss on his lips. “You can’t run away from me, Mike Wheeler,” she whispered.

He smiled into the kiss, a wave of relief crashing over him like nothing he’d ever felt before. El’s validation of his own sentiment – something he had known without realizing -- was all he ever needed. 

A sheepish smile spread across Mike’s face. “I think I’ve always loved you, you know. From the very start.”

“Does that mean you’re still breaking up with me?”

Mike coughed out a laugh. He didn’t need to say no; she knew.

As El rested her head on Mike’s shoulder, Mike couldn’t even find it in him to be upset with his father. Maybe Mike was less experienced, but he knew more than Ted Wheeler ever would. Because he knew what it really meant to love. 


End file.
